


The Hunter to the Hunted

by jax (hippydeath)



Category: Robin of Sherwood
Genre: Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-02
Updated: 2009-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippydeath/pseuds/jax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What binds the hunter to the hunted? Before the Hooded Man came to the forest, the way had to be paved for him. Ailric of Loxley is hunted and confronts his fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunter to the Hunted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jenavira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenavira/gifts).



> This comes from a Yuletide prompt, and has been uploaded there as a New Year Resolution 2008 fic. My version of the Wild Hunt is bastardised from a whole host of sources, and I can only hope it hangs together.

When Ailric of Loxley was little, his mother always warned him not to look outside on All Hallows Eve when the winds blew high and the animals were strangely quiet.  
“Herne hunts tonight, with his Wild Hunt, and they’ll take any boys who aren’t good and asleep when they come through.” She’d say, and he’d duck his head under his rough pillow and pray they wouldn’t take him or his ma or pa.

When Ailric of Loxley was a youth, not young enough for the childhood games, but not old enough for soldiering, his father would cuff him round the ears and tell him to be in before nightfall on All Hallows Eve, when the winds were high and the animals brayed at nothing in particular.  
“Get caught out there and the Sheriff’ll have ye for devil worship boy, and then ye’d with the Hunt’d taken ye when ye were a lad.” He’d grouch, and Ailric would sneak looks through the darkness and push how late he could be outside for.

He was fifteen, and a year into an apprenticeship with the fletcher, of all things, when he was later back to Loxley than he had meant, too busy smiling shyly at the bowyer’s lass to notice the sky growing dark. He’d run most of the way home, giddy from her smile, but he’d run faster as the darkness grew and the fear of something watching him through the trees started to prickle at the back of his neck, and he was almost there, he could see his little hut, was almost tripping on the old cabbages that hadn’t been pulled up yet when the air became colder, and the cabbages started to crunch under his feet and his breath clouded in front of him like a January morning.

All the folk who lived on the edges of the forest knew the stories of Herne the Hunter, and all the superstitious folk knew the stories of the Wild Hunt; most, like him grew up with the warnings and threats when they were little, and every year they’d here the odd tale of a child going from another village, or even Nottingham itself, lost to the Hunt.  
Herne was a wild thing, of the forest and the old ways they said, as tall as two men with the horns of a great stag, benevolent except for the night that he led his hunt through the country, chasing down those who took too much, or who trespassed on his sacred groves, or who were unlucky enough to cross his path.  
Be chased down or join them; that would be your choice.

In that moment, Ailric knew that he would have to make his choice, and he looked up at the Forest Lord and Master of the Wild Hunt, a giant astride a giant horse, dark shadowy figures pacing around him, and back, further back than his human eyes could clearly see, he got the impression of others, monstrous and beautiful, waiting to be called to the chase.  
He knelt without prompting. “I’ll join you, Herne, Lord of the Trees and the Hunt, I’ll join you and be spared the chase and the death at the mercy of your hunters and hounds.” He stammered out, teeth chattering around his words and his knee aching from the cold of the ground.  
There was silence for long, dragging minutes, seemed to consider him, and the shadows darted closer to him, stealing his breath away. Then the air filled with a deep, grating sound; laughter. The Lord of the Wild Hunt was laughing at him.  
“No, you will not.” Herne spoke, and the shadows around him stilled, the shadows at the edge of sight seemed to freeze up. “You will not join this hunt of the damned, but nor will you die tonight, though you will wish it, in time.”  
“But, you have caught me, I am yours.” Ailric looked up but saw no features to which he could say looked at him with any kind of emotion.  
There was simply more laughter, and the voice this time seemed to come from the trees, as well as the figure in front of him. “You are mine Ailric of Loxley, but not now, not in this way.” Then he raised a fist and a horn sounded somewhere, echoing round in the cold air, his horse scuffed at the ground and tossed its head. “Remember that I will call on you Ailric of Loxley, remember who you belong to.”

Then the Hunt was gone and the air was warming up again, as quickly and as silently as they had come, and as quickly as it had cooled. Ailric found his knee wet and muddy and aching with a bone deep cold, and as he stood, he still felt as though he were being watched.

He stumbled home and took the scolding he got from his mother, falling into sleep that was riddled with men wearing stags heads, and glints of silver.

When Ailric of Loxley was a man, he had no one to tell him what to do on All Hallow’s Eve, when the wind blew high and soldiers still prowled for serfs to abuse. But he knew what he’d encounter should he be foolish enough to be out, and as a young, newly married man, had little reason to be out after dark on cold nights like that.

He was twenty two, and a widower and a father when he was caught in the forest by the Sheriff’s men an hour before nightfall. They took his bow and his knife and beat him for a while before they let him go, spooked by the encroaching darkness of the forest. He ran, as best as he could, heading for home and his son, trying to outrun the start of the Hunt’s ride.  
He didn’t make it to the edge of the forest before the fog drew in and the air chilled, the shadows merging into hounds and indistinct figures, the giant Lord on the giant mount silently in front of him as he pressed an aching knee to the frozen ground.

“None before have ever been able to say that they have twice been caught by the Wild Hunt Ailric of Loxley. Are you so foolish to tempt death over again?” Herne spoke, belittling Ailric as he knelt, shivering on the ground.  
“No my Lord, never.” He stuttered.  
“You are still mine, Ailric of Loxley, and I bid you to run.” The shadows of the hounds around his mount started to bay and pace, and horns started the blow in the distance.  
Ailric looked at the horned figure, and past him at Loxley. “My Lord, my son, I cannot leave him.”  
The mount snorted. “Run, man, when you may have a chance to outrun us and see your son come the morning.”  
Shadows moved and the air became colder. With one final looked at the fires of Loxley, Ailric turned and ran, his bruised ribs screaming as he tore through the forest, always feeling the shadows on his heels, and the pounding hoof beats echoing in his ears.

He ran that night faster and further than he ever thought he would be able to. He led them on a merry chase through the forest, and in the forest they remained for on open ground, he knew that a rider could catch up to a running fugitive with ease, but in the forest, the trees slowed the Hunt more than it slowed him.  
The trees were as relentless as the hunters, scratching him and slowing him down, none of them big enough to climb and hide in. Streams brought him odd moments of respite, for even the shadow hounds seemed unable to track him as he walked in the ice cold water, though whether they were bound by running water or simply unable to find his scent, he never knew.  
Only briefly did he think of Robin back in the village, and what would be his fate if he didn’t survive this.  
Midnight came and went as he was driven deeper into the forest where it was harder to know which turn to take and which to ignore.  
Eventually he thought that the hooves and howls had faded into the background, far from where he was, and he risked leaning against an old tree for a moment, just to get his breath. Without knowing, he dozed and time passed, until he was woken by the snorting of a horse and the yapping of hounds’ just meters from where he stood.  
“Daring, Ailric of Loxley, and wise.” Herne and his mount stood in front of him, even if they were meters away. “To take solace where the Hunt cannot tread.”  
He looked around him; he saw nothing but bare trees and bushes and piles of old dead leaves, nothing to mark the area as different. Shadowy hounds pawed at the leaves, and the other riders held even further back, where, in the almost total darkness, he could see only the rare flicker when they moved. The fog though, seemed to be held back, approaching him only as a fine mist, and though it was cold, it was not as he had come to expect from the Wild Hunt.  
“We will wait you out though, for we are patient, and no man has lasted a night in Darkmere.” The giant Lord promised, and Ailric shivered.  
Darkmere, panic would not serve him now, but even more than the tales of the Wild Hunt, he had always been warned never to stray into Darkmere, for it was old and sacred, and no man had ever come back from there with his mind in one piece. It was sacred to the Lord of the Forest, but none of that mattered now. If it would keep him safe until the sun rose and the Hunt departed, he would remain, and he would keep his mind. For Robin’s sake.  
He settled cross legged on the ground and tried to give the Hunt no more attention.  
He dozed, fitfully, woken every now and again by the hounds, or the mount of the Hunt leader, or by strange noises that he couldn’t place until the first rays of the sun started to penetrate the forest and the riders furthest from him started to fade with the shadows. Then the hounds, until only Herne and his mount remained.  
“You were a noble quarry, Ailric of Loxley. You led us on a true hunt. No more will we chase you, even if you are foolish enough to stray out on All Hallow’s Eve.” Herne said, then he and the mount were gone, and even though he could leave, Ailric found no energy to do so. Falling into a deep sleep, dreaming of dark hounds and his little boy, and an arrow made of ancient silver, he remained in Darkmere.

A sharp gust of wind woke him, driving leaves against his face, and he sat bolt upright, looking around in panic. Daylight, but still in Darkmere, although still, he thought, in possession of his senses. Then another gust battered him and he looked around again. At the figure of the man with a stag’s head beckoning him to follow.  
Herne, smaller and less imposing as the Lord of the Forest, rather than the giant of the Wild Hunt.  
He stood and followed without hesitation to a cave where words were spoken in a language he didn’t understand and he was given a bow, and a box containing a treasure that would feed Loxley for years, if he could have found someone to buy such a thing.  
“You proved to the Hunt that you are cunning prey; that you can run and not give up hope. And that you are patient. That is why you are now mine. They have no use for you, but I do.” Ailric’s heart sank; even as he swore to protect, he wanted nothing more than to go home to his son and to live his life without interference. “You are to make the way ready for the coming of a protector of the people, those who are forgotten and downtrodden and beaten by those who would conquer this land.”  
He drank, and swore to protect those in need, and to heed the calls of the land, even though Herne’s instructions and explanations were vague.  
As he turned to leave, Herne spoke up again. “Darkmere is mine,” Herne told him by way of answering earlier questions of why the Hunt had been unable to catch him, “it is mine when I am the Lord of the Forest, and when I am Lord of the Wild Hunt, I cannot tread there, for balance must be kept.”  
Ailric asked if that meant that there was somewhere that he couldn’t tread, but Herne remained silent.  
Then the cave filled with smoke, or fog, and Ailric was alone, with a bow, and an arrow of silver, and no understanding of what had really transpired since he was apprehended by the Sheriff’s men the night before.

When he was a man, Ailric of Loxley was often out at night on All Hallow’s Eve, returning from a hunt, or from making sure that those who fell under his care were safe. He saw the Wild Hunt some years, and others he didn’t, but every year, his knee ached with the cold, and he would wonder if this would be the year that they would tire of him flaunting that he was now beyond them and hunt him one last time.

When Robin of Loxley was little, his father always warned him not to look outside on All Hallows Eve when the winds blew high and the animals were strangely quiet.  
“Herne hunts tonight, with his Wild Hunt, and they’ll take any boys who aren’t good and asleep when they come through.” He’d say, and Robin would duck his head under the blanket and try not to dream of his father being hunted down by shadows on horses, while Ailric would watch out the window all night, knowing that if not them, someone would come for him eventually.


End file.
